Growth Mindset

This feels like the perfect topic for my life right now. I definitely have been mumbling, "I don't want to do this anymore" and "This is good enough" as I set up my classroom. I also am guilty of thinking, "What if I'm not smart enough?" whenever I think about grad school.

Is it bad to have these thoughts? Not necessarily. Instead of thinking about it as bad or good, we can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that these kinds of thoughts are normal. But normal doesn't mean productive and normal is learned. So, can we change our brains to think positively?

I've been doing some research this summer and I've found some promising information and resources that say we can change our brains!

This year, I am teaching growth mindset in our classroom. My district has done some great things with social-emotional learning (SEL), where K-2 is on the same SEL plan and 3-5 is on the same SEL plan. While the plans are great, a pitfall I found was that when I taught 2nd grade, it felt like by the time the kiddos got to 2nd grade, the material was worn out. Now that I'm switching to 5th grade, I'm predicting that it may be the same problem. But before I dive into the what I'm doing, here is some of the research I've looked at.

Mindset Kit
https://www.mindsetkit.org/

This website was created by The Project for Education Research that Scales (PERTS), which is a research center through Stanford. It has lots of lesson plans to help you introduce mindset to your students, videos that make understanding mindset easier, and even specialized material so staff and parents.

As I walked through one of the lessons, I came across this video. It explains how the brain is malleable. The video explained this through two different studies, one with rats and another with taxi drivers. Give it a watch. It's only 2 minutes and it fascinating! If you've watched the video and are thinking, "This is great! But how to I present it to my kiddos?" Try this lesson plan, which is provided for free on Mindset Kit's website. I sound like an advertiser but I promise I'm not! :)

Carol Dweck
The Power of Believing You Can Impove

I love Ted Talks and Ted Ed. I find them to be so enriching to use in the classroom and my students love them! Don't underestimate your kid ya'll! They can totally handle Ted Talks and Ted Ed videos. But, let's refocus Kati. So. This Ted Talk is by Carol Dweck. Dweck is a motivtion researcher and psychologist. She's also kind of a badass. She's done some amazing studies and the statistics in this video are UNREAL. I've linked it above. It's about 10 minutes long and can sound a little dry but it's so full amazing stuff.

She speaks about the power of "yet". Imagine your student staring at they're math book or trying to read something hard. "I can't do it!" You can just add the word "yet". "I can't do it yet" holds a lot more power. I also love how she pushes us to praise the effort and the process rather than the talent.

"People in a growth mindset believe that anyone can be good at anything because they believe that your abilities are caused by actions. People in a fixed mindset believe that you aren't good at something based on your inherent nature. I can improve my growth mindset by believing in myself and trying my best." -Molly Gonzales (from the comments section of the Ted Talk. She sums is up so well!)

Once you've looked at those resources, you may have your own track you want to follow when introducing growth mindset to your class. Here is what I've done so far and what I'm working on now to get ready for the beginning of the year.

One resource that I love is this Change your words, Change your Mindset bulletin board. I put it up in my classroom and I love it! It's such an amazing visual!

Another resource that I'm adding to my toolkit when it comes to growth mindset is having students rate their work on a 0-4 scale. I found this scale here on TeachersPayTeachers. The purpose of having them rate their work is that they might be a 0 or a 1 now, but we're going to work it until we are a 3 or a 4. 

So this is where I'm at now. I don't want to necessarily overwhelm my kiddos so using the lesson from Mindset Kit and the resources I've shown above, I think that's a pretty good place to start!

What do you think? Are you interested in growth mindset? Do you believe that the brain can be changed and grow?

Kati

Math Resources, Projects, and Messes, OH MY!

Good morning!

I hope everyone is enjoying their summer! It's HOT here. So hot that I've left my window AC and two fans on for 2 days straight just to keep the apartment below 80 degrees. But I'm also enjoying the AC before I get my key today for my classroom, which has no AC.

Did I mention I get my key!? I emailed my boss yesterday because I'm so patient and he let me know that I could pick up my key this afternoon. Does 12:01pm count?

If you didn't know, my school is being rebuilt so we are in a temporary building and so I'll be walking into a room filled with boxes...and not just my boxes. Boxes from the previous teacher. And boxes from the storage room. ALL THE BOXES!

I have to apologize now if this post seems scattered. I'm definitely well into my second cup of coffee and I had the brilliant idea to freeze coffee in my ice tray so it wouldn't water down my coffee and I'm the most jittery.

Alright. Here's to refocusing. Being locked out of my classroom has been tough but I have found a way to be super productive with my time and I thought I would share some great resources with you all. I've had to switch my thinking up as I move from 2nd to 5th. One thing I really have tried to focus on is differentiated challenge. That means that no matter what level a student is performing at, they are being challenged at the right level. Usually, I'm know for creating my own resources but this year, I decided to explore what's out there so I could 1) save some time and 2) utilize some amazing resources that are already available. I purchased this "How Did You Solve It?" math card kit from Lakeshore Learning Store. Our curriculum is Common Core aligned so having this kit already be aligned to that will help me when deciding what cards to pull and how to be more intentional in my planning.

When you open up the box, you see that the cards are organized into 4 main clusters. Each tabbed divider tells you which cards addresses which standard. At the very back of the box, the manual gives the answer. Some answers will vary depending on how the student interprets the question, which is a great way for students to work on higher-level thinking skills. Other questions are looking for one specific answer, which is great for skills practice. I really love this set and plan on using it as a part of my math centers, which I will explain later in this post. I feel like it allows students to practice skills wherever they may be in their math journey.




The next picture shows an example of one of the cards. I love that it asks what you need to know to solve the problem before asking the students to solve the problem. It really gets them into the mindset and forces them to think about the concept!

A project I've been working on for math is math centers. If you follow Miss Fifth on Instagram or Facebook, you know she's an amazing teacher with crazy good ideas. One idea that I loved, and she explained really well in a video on her Facebook page, is how she runs math centers. This is something I loved doing in 2nd grade but sometimes it felt so unmanageable. Well, Miss Fifth does them once a week on Friday and it serves as a review of the content from that week. She has an amazing bulletin board for centers that I fell in love with. I've linked it here. If you are thinking about doing centers this year for math or ELA, you should check out her stuff. I definitely would have used it this year. Unfortunately with all the moving and changes coming in the next two years, I just couldn't pull the trigger on buying and making the supplies. Plus, my classroom has really limited wall space. That being said, I improvised and made a Smartboard that does the same thing. I won't be putting this up on TPT because that would feel like stealing her idea but here is a peek at it. It took several hours to make but I think it will be really worth it.

My next post will be about the Literacy resources I have found and will be using but I'm still playing around with my center ideas...see:

Well, I'm off to get my key. I think we all knew I wouldn't make it until noon.

Enjoy the sunshine my friends!
Kati

I'm Baaaaack

Hey there!

I'm back from Australia and finally enjoyed a full night of sleep last night so I think I'm recovered from my jet lag! If you follow me on Instagram, you'll know everything that happened on my trip. If you're curious, you should go check it out! It was such an amazing adventure and I'm so excited to teach my 5th grade kiddos all about some amazing stuff I saw and experienced!.

On that note, I did spend a lot of time thinking about my classroom and my
kiddos on the trip. Don't worry! It was all fun/relaxing thinking about work! I came up with a lot of ideas so there should be some great new and FREE stuff coming to my TPT in the coming weeks! I prefer to put things up for free and then if there is something that is successful, I like to charge later. Take advantage of that now! All I ask if for some feedback and reviews so I can improve the projects. I like to improve the projects with your classrooms and kids in mind. Also, are you a 5th grade teacher? Maybe you have an Instagram or TPT account? Let me know! I'd love to connect up and follow your accounts. It will be my first year teaching 5th grade so I would love to see all the amazing things you've already mastered.

I've already started working on classroom stuff and I'm getting so excited to see it all come together. This year I bit the bullet and purchased fadeless bulletin board paper. I usually just use the butcher paper from the staff workroom but it's never wide or tall enough so this should make things easier. Also, it's patterned like faded and weathered wood planks so it fits with the shabby-chic burlap theme...so really that's why I bought it. It has nothing to do with ease...hahahaha! Hopefully it matches the vision or I think we all know that I'll scrap the idea regardless of the fact that I bought 3 rolls. I also have been working on my planner for this year. At first I thought I would just buy one because they can be pretty overwhelming to make but then I chalked the feeling of being overwhelmed to pure laziness. I finished up last night and I'm so glad I did it myself. It's my best one yet! The cover art is insanely beautiful! I'll snap a picture for Instagram in the next few days.

On the personal side of things, I just finished up my phone conferences with my grad school advisers. OMG you guys. It's happening. It's so weird but exciting. This upcoming quarter I am taking 6 credits, which is two classes and I already know one of them I'm going to destroy. It's collaborating and communicating with parents, colleagues, and the community. If you know me well enough, you know that education is my favorite thing to talk non-stop about so this should be a breeze! Hahaha!

That's just a brief update on things. I'll probably have a more thorough post when I have some pictures of my TPT products and classroom stuff.

Hope you're all having an amazing week so far!
Kati